Investors interested in Schools stocks are likely familiar with Afya (AFYA) and Grand Canyon Education (LOPE). But which of these two stocks is more attractive to value investors? We'll need to take a closer look to find out.
There are plenty of strategies for discovering value stocks, but we have found that pairing a strong Zacks Rank with an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system produces the best returns. The Zacks Rank is a proven strategy that targets companies with positive earnings estimate revision trends, while our Style Scores work to grade companies based on specific traits.
Afya has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), while Grand Canyon Education has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now. The Zacks Rank favors stocks that have recently seen positive revisions to their earnings estimates, so investors should rest assured that AFYA has an improving earnings outlook. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.
Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.
Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.
AFYA currently has a forward P/E ratio of 8.82, while LOPE has a forward P/E of 17.02. We also note that AFYA has a PEG ratio of 0.66. This figure is similar to the commonly-used P/E ratio, with the PEG ratio also factoring in a company's expected earnings growth rate. LOPE currently has a PEG ratio of 1.13.
Another notable valuation metric for AFYA is its P/B ratio of 1.69. The P/B ratio pits a stock's market value against its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, LOPE has a P/B of 6.44.
These metrics, and several others, help AFYA earn a Value grade of B, while LOPE has been given a Value grade of C.
AFYA has seen stronger estimate revision activity and sports more attractive valuation metrics than LOPE, so it seems like value investors will conclude that AFYA is the superior option right now.
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Grand Canyon Education, Inc. (LOPE) : Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
